Chuck vs the Load Balancer
by DetroitNate
Summary: Chuck gets the Intersect, but it comes with some different features that takes him some time to figure out. Will those features help him in his mission to protect the secret in his head, protect his family, and most important of all get the girl? Of course this is all Charah! I am not sure the posting schedule, but it will be a longer story. This is an AU story.
1. Chapter 1

**Chuck versus the Load Balancer Chapter 1**

**Author's Note**: OK, this is an idea that has been kicking around in my head for a while now. I plan on making it a multi-chapter story, though I am not sure what the length will be. I am also not sure my posting schedule, so please bear with me.

I want to make sure that all of you are aware of this one fact: this is strictly an AU story. Yes, I am going to try and use some of the episodes from the show, but as you will see in the first chapter, I am not going strictly based on the episodes, so there may be some skipping of various episodes. Another thing that I want to make clear, I am posting this story without the help of a beta, so please go easy on the formatting and grammar mistakes that you may find. I have had this idea for a while now after reading some other great stories here.

I am not making any money on this story – it is being done for fun on my part and to explore a what-if question that I have been kicking around in my brain.

All of that said, please enjoy!

* * *

**Project Kick Off**

**A Definition**: In computing, load balancing distributes workloads across multiple computing resources, such as computers, a computer cluster, network links, central processing units or disk drives. Load balancing aims to optimize resource use, maximize throughput, minimize response time, and _**avoid overload of any single resource**_. (From Wikipedia, emphasis added)

* * *

**The Scientist - June 1995**

The scientist grunted as he looked at the spreadsheet for the millionth time. His mind was crunching the data, turning it over and over, looking at it from one direction and then in the next moment looking at it from another direction. As his mind did this, his fingers gently caressed the sheets of computer paper that showed the numbers, the data, the results, the continued failure. Because, that is what he was looking at, yet another failure – if the numbers proved to be correct, and sadly he knew that they would, this simulation was a failure.

He had thought it would succeed this time. He had hoped it would. To finally be able to have an actual Intersect – one that wouldn't force the use of a Governor – was so close. But, and this thought brought a smile to his face, close only counted in horse shoes and hand grenades – and neither of those would help him in this situation.

"Dammit", he yelled in frustration. Throwing his arms up in the air he stood from the desk in his office and stalked out of the room. His two children were out playing with neighborhood kids, so the scientist decided to go for a walk in the summer heat. As he walked he passed suburban homes, some looking immaculate and others not so much, but all had a feeling that permeated the neighborhood: home.

He smiled thinking of how he and his wife had decided on the home they now lived in. It had been several years ago, but only a few since his wife had disappeared. No word on why or where. Only a small hand-written note on his pillow that read:

I have to do this for your safety and the safety of our children, I love you. Don't look for me.

He hadn't heard from her in years, but he still would look and listen and hope. He smiled again a little at the change that had come over their children since she had left. Their daughter had stepped up and taken charge as much as a teenager could. Their son though had withdrawn into himself only focusing on his friendship with his best friend – the two of them playing various video games through the nights and weekends, collecting comics, and debating ideas about Star Wars.

The noise began softly, but grew louder as the scientist's walk took him closer to the local playground. His thoughts still ebbing and flowing about his children, his missing wife, and the problem that had brought him outside. As he slowed to watch the many children playing on the playground, he tried to spot either his son or daughter when he spied two younger children playing on the seesaw. He watched as first one and then the other child pushed off with all their might rocketing to the apex then just as quickly coming back down when the other participant tried to get higher. Just as he was turning away not noticing either of his children, the seesaw stopped its action as somehow both of the children had gotten it to balance both of their weights perfectly, something that brought laughter and smiles to their small innocent faces.

The scientist stared as the children began to seesaw up and down, trying once again to bring the equipment back into balance. His mind reeled… could it be that simple? It was so simple that he couldn't begin to comprehend the idea, but it should work. He turned back to the house; he would run the numbers again using this idea. Deep down, he knew this was the solution. This was the way to have a viable intersect – it just needed a load balancer to make it work at the fullest capacity without endangering the person with it. Of course, how would he find the necessary agents to that would be not only capable, but compatible?

"Who cares about that, I need to see the numbers first."

When he walked into his home he knew something wasn't right, the door to his office was open. His heart seized up and he slowly moved towards the door, trying to extend his senses out to determine if an intruder was still in the room. He neared the door and not seeing or hearing anyone cautiously pushed it open. His eyes widen at the sight that came to him, sitting there in a chair was his youngest son, who was staring at the array of monitors. The monitors all blank except the main computer were blank, the main monitor of the prototype displayed the message that the program had run successfully.

The scientist could barely whisper one worded question, "Chuck?"

* * *

**The Young Woman - January 2003**

The young woman was tired. Bone-wearily, mind-numbingly, fall-over tired. She could no longer put two words together in a coherent fashion. The fact that she was even able to walk in a somewhat vertical manner was amazing, she looked more like a drunkard stumbling home than a spy with a few years under her belt already. If she could make it back to her room it would be a miracle. Luckily the miracle occurred, and the woman was able to reach her small room and collapse on the small twin bed that took up the far wall of the room.

The room was so nondescript, saying it had four walls, a bed, and a wardrobe would be about all that could be said. Even the beige-ish color of the walls bored itself, and if given a chance the paint would pack up and take the next train in order to get away from the stifling boredom. These facts were so boring that most people's minds would even ignore them and move on to other things that would be more interesting.

The absolute thing that _would_ interest anyone would be the single occupant in the room, who was currently laying on her belly, her head pressed into the pillow, breathing softly in a rhythm that no doubt was proof of her being completely asleep. Her blonde hair spread out to one side and looked tangled and matted, like its owner had recently been doing something tremendously physical. One of her toned arms was buried under the pillow to help provide her head a little more support, while the other dangled off the side of the small bed. She was wearing workout clothes which looked well worn. Her feet were slightly draped off the end of the bed, still clad in the shoes that look comfortable and broken in. The visible side of her sleeping face was flush from exertion and if an observer looked very closely, her eyes moved rapidly under her eyelids – proof that she was in REM sleep. What the observer couldn't know was the dreams the young woman was currently having, just that she was dreaming.

Dreams that seemed at once more coherent than any the young woman had ever had, but at the same time so random that the she couldn't make out what they were as they flitted through her mind like a red-throated hummingbird flying around after drinking a quad shot of espresso. Random pictures and words and mathematical formulas paraded around her subconscious. There seemed no reason to the patterns that wove themselves around her.

Then in a moment of striking clarity, she stood on a beach. The surf was making its usual progression as it broke on the sand that stretched for several feet in front of her. She knew she was dreaming, but was amazed that she could smell the sea and the air. She noticed she was wearing a patterned blouse under a dark jacket and a pair of tight dark pants, she had shoes but they were currently in her hand. She looked down and could make out each individual grain of sand as she flexed her toes, shocking her again that she could feel the warmer sand part and the moist cooler sand met her toes exploration. She looked up and saw only a gray sky with no discernable clouds, just overcast. She looked around and saw no one and only seven palm trees behind her. Nothing else was visible.

So having nothing else to do, she sat down and began to think, which she realized was odd as she had never thought in a dream before now. She dropped the shoes to her left side and pulled her legs up so that she could rest her crossed arms on them and then rest her chin on her arms as she continued her silent vigilance.

She heard a small noise as something approached her from behind. She realized her instincts, which had now been honed to a razor's edge in order to survive the world she had found herself in didn't warn her of a problem. In fact as she sat, she felt calm and at the same time anxious to meet the person coming towards her.

She looked back toward the surf as a young man came to sit next to her. She didn't spare him a glance, until he spoke.

"I am glad you're finally here." His voice was strong and soft, it sounded kind with a hint of nervousness running through it. And it calmed her even more.

"Why?" She asked him, finally turning her face toward the young man.

He had positioned himself in almost the same position as she was in, except his face was turned toward her. Because it was a dream, she wasn't able to make out any details. She could instinctively feel that he had dark brown hair that was longish and curled around his ears and the neck of his lighter striped shirt. She continued her gaze down from his face and saw that he was wearing dark jeans and a pair of black Chuck Taylor shoes, which she found to be an odd choice for beach footwear.

She felt that his brow knitted in a look of surprise when she looked at him. As he did this he came into a little more focus, but she couldn't really understand all of his facial features, except for one: his eyes. They looked like brown pools of warm hot chocolate and seemed to stare right into her soul. It at once made her both uncomfortable and completely at peace, it was unnerving but endearing.

His look of surprise was almost instantly replaced with one of joy and happiness, and for some reason the young woman's chest burned with her own joy at the thought that her appearance had caused his happiness. This was much different from the look of shock and fear that greeted her many times in the real world.

"Well, you being here means a lot of things are going right. It means that my life might actually be starting to turn around finally."

She continued to stare at him, uncertain of what he meant or how it related to anything in this dream world. But somehow she felt something about this young man, something important.

"I still don't understand. Care to explain?" She smiled as she spoke wanting him to not shut down from frustration at her ignorance.

And so he did. He told her of his life, and instead of feeling bored the young woman began to feel closer to this dream man. She wanted to help him. To make sure that he was OK. It would've scared her how strongly she was already feeling towards him, but she justified her feelings believing it was only a dream.

They talked for an indeterminate amount of time. Finally, the young man stood up brushing the back of his pants to rid himself of the sand. She was amused to see how tall he was, he had a good several inches on her.

"Well, I guess it's time to go. I'll see ya around; it was good to finally meet you."

He held out a hand to help the young woman stand. Brushing her own pants off, she shrugged and smiling up at the young man said, "Ditto," and then quietly watched as the he began walking away from the surf and ocean. Before he was completely out of sight, he stopped and turned to face her and waved good-bye. He then turned and was gone, and the young woman was left alone on the beach.

At some point the random pictures and words and formulas began their frenetic dance until the alarm went off obnoxiously announcing it was time for the young woman to rise and get ready for another grueling day.

* * *

**One Is Enough**

The scientist looked at the numbers from the latest batch of recruits. His mind wandered as it often did when he was sitting still.

"Project Omaha… phtth. Sounds like that old wildlife TV shows… of course the people we are studying are more dangerous than most of the animals of that show. I wonder where these CIA types come up with these names. Hmm… I wonder if it instead refers to Omaha Beach… some of these people seem to be storming their own beaches…"

His eyes stopped as he got to one name. The numbers were astonishing. They were exactly what he had hoped for. His smile was tired, but larger than any he had had for many long months. It had worked. He had seen so many patches, hotfixes, and recodes he didn't, he couldn't, count the actual number anymore, but finally it had worked. All of the other recruits had been washouts and quickly rejected as possibilities, but one had worked, and he was ecstatic.

Out of the many there was one, but that one was enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chuck vs. the Load Balancer – Chapter 2**

**Author's Note**: All right, I know that I said this story would take some time in posting, but this was ridiculous. First my computer died and took all of my outlines and two thirds of this chapter with it. Then I was on vacation with no access to my new computer. That said, I hope that those of you waiting for the next chapter of this story find it to be worth the wait.

I am not making any money on this story – it is being done for fun on my part and to explore a what-if question that I have been kicking around in my brain.

All of that said, please enjoy!

* * *

A thought about load balancers:

_By balancing application requests across multiple servers, a load balancer reduces individual server load and prevents any one application server from becoming a single point of failure, thus improving overall application availability and responsiveness._

\- From the Citrix website about load balancing

* * *

**Lunch September 18**

Morgan yawned. "Man, I am tired…", he thought as he yawned a second time.

The night before he and his best friend, one Charles Irving Bartowski – or Chuck to his friends, had spent the night playing Duck Hunt on an old Super Nintendo system and binged on pizza and grape soda. During the game and in between bites of cheap pizza and even cheaper soda, they had discussed various topics. Morgan smiled as he again considered the debate on whether the PlayStation or Xbox were the better gaming system – in Morgan's mind it really didn't matter, just get both and the debate was solved. The only reason they had stopped the Nerd Bacchanalia was Ellie, Chuck's older sister and former object of Morgan's unrequited affections, had been woken and in a monumental fury had told them both to stop and go to bed.

"Ahh… good times", Morgan grinned as he walked past a Buy More customer trying to get his attention. Morgan of course just ignored the woman who was hoping to get his advice on a washer / drier set.

"Sorry Ma'am, I'm not with the appliance group. You need to go talk to Fernando over there," Morgan impatiently directed the somewhat frantic and completely pesky woman.

Morgan's eye scanned the store starting at the white ramparts of the in-store bastion to all things Nerd: the Nerd Herd desk. It was Chuck usual location, however, the only Nerd Herder manning the desk was Anna Wu, who smiled and waved at Morgan. He grimaced back at her, and continued to his scan of the store.

Finally, Morgan's search came to rest on the front doors of the store – his eyes sliding into place just in time to see Lou Palone entering with a large bag from her sandwich shop. Lou saw Morgan, and smiling made her way over to him.

"Hiya Morgan, have you seen Chuck?"

Morgan smiled at the petite brunette. Her big brown eyes seemed to brighten for some reason that caused him to mentally shrug.

"Oh hey Lou, I was just trying to figure out where our birthday boy has disappeared to myself."

Lou smiled back at Morgan, "Well then let's go Chuck hunting. I brought lunch for the three of us."

Lou laughed at the joy that shone through Morgan's brown eyes (that she had also noticed were flecked with gold colors – almost like he was a lump of gold she had fished out of a river). She always adored the way he always got excited when she brought the three of them lunch.

Lou, Morgan, and Chuck had been friends, well actually Lou had been included with the duo since Chuck and Morgan had initially walked into her sandwich shop three years ago when she opened it in the strip mall that contained the Buy More and Large Mart. She had just broken up with her boyfriend for a second time and the friendly bantering between Chuck and Morgan had intrigued her. Lou had been pulled like a moth to a flame by the open friendliness and acceptance the two young men had shown her.

She had initially been somewhat attracted to Chuck, but between the rather extreme height difference and the often distracted look he seemed to have when he thought no one was looking Lou rethought things. Now Morgan, well, that was a different story. Lou had fallen for the short bearded man as they grew closer as friends. She knew he still had some ways to grow and mature, but his unwavering loyalty to his close friends and family, and his ability to just accept her into that circle of friends had captured her heart immediately. Lou could wait though until Morgan got his act together, though in the last year that seemed to be closer and closer now. As the trio's friendship deepened and grew, they had begun to have regular lunches together. Lou's crush on Morgan never abated, even during the tumultuous Anna Wu period.

The two friends began their search for the elusive birthday boy. Since they were still near the entrance they began their search at the Customer Service desk. Knowing it was a long shot, as neither expected Chuck to be there, they weren't surprised when he wasn't. They moved down the center aisle toward the hub, the veritable nerve center of the Buy More: the Nerd Herd desk (Morgan desperately hoping that Anna had left or was otherwise engaged). They were in luck, as Anna was no longer sitting at the desk having been replaced by the tall nerd who was the subject of their search.

"Hey guys, what's going on?" Chuck was grinning as he watched his two friends approach the inner sanctum.

Lou returned Chuck's smile, and held up the bag – "I brought lunch for the birthday boy, can you take a break?"

"For the two of you? Absolutely! Come on, let's head over to the break room." Turning his head slightly, Chuck spoke in a more authoritative voice, "Hey, Jeff and Lester – I'm heading to lunch, please man the desk and keep the perviness to a minimum, if you can. All right?"

Chuck jumped over the desk without waiting for a response, knowing that he wouldn't get one from the two Nerd Herd slacker corp. Once again grinning at his friends they all fell into step chatting amicably about everything and nothing – standard fare for the trio.

Eventually making it to the break room, Chuck pulled out a chair for Lou before grabbing one for himself.

"So, oh Mighty Purveyor of All Things Sandwichy – what has your brilliant lunch meat mind created today?"

"I have in my hand your birthday present Chuck – your own sandwich: The Chuck!" Lou couldn't help grinning at the shocked look of her friend.

"Wow… that is… just wow! This is so awesome Lou, thank you so much. Hey Morgan, I have officially made the big leagues, I am now a sandwich!" Chuck grinned at his two friends, feeling happy and slightly overwhelmed at the kindness these two people had shown him through the years.

"_Now if only Morgan would get a clue and ask Lou out!_" Chuck thought to himself watching the other two of the trio banter back and forth as Morgan began to beg for his own sandwich, to which Lou laughed and imperiously demanded more devotion on his part in order to prove his sandwichy worth.

Chuck just shook his head and as he began to open the sandwich, made up of rye, pastrami, muenster, and to his surprise and tastebuds' happiness: coleslaw, he took a bite.

"MMMM Lou, you are truly an artist, the coleslaw was a stroke of genius!"

Lou smiled around her sandwich, and Morgan looked over at Chuck, "Hey Chuck, you wanna share that?"

"Sorry Buddy, nope", Chuck drug out the "p", "this is much too good for children!"

Morgan looked like he was going to defend himself and just as he opened his mouth, Chuck's head exploded in pain. Chuck yelped in pain, dropped the Chuck on the table, and grabbed his temples in an effort to stave off the massive headache. He dropped his head onto the table, barely registering Morgan pulling the sandwich out of the way and Lou quickly standing and moving behind him gently rubbing his shoulders – both of them knew about Chuck's headaches, something that he tried to keep quiet about as he had constantly refused to go see a doctor about them. Morgan moved to the breakroom door and pulling the shade closed he locked the door and turned the lights off before quietly making his way back to Chuck and Lou who was still silently rubbing Chuck's shoulders. In the semi darkness of the break room, the two friends looked at each other and conveyed silently the worry for their tall friend – the headaches had been a constant threat that Chuck dealt with, but recently they seemed to be coming more frequently, and it was beginning to truly worry them both.

Chuck didn't see this as he currently was concentrating on the semi-coolness of the table top against his head, his fingers putting pressure in various locations on his skull, Lou's gentle touch on his shoulders, and last but not least the images flashing in front of his closed eyelids. He had had these occurrences, or flashes as he called them, ever since he was ten years old and saw something in his father's office. Besides the two people in the room, the only ones who knew about the occurrences were his sister, her boyfriend, and his dad – though none of them knew of the images, just the headaches. Ellie, his sister, had even gone into neurology in order to try and heal her brother. His father had tried to recreate the computer that Chuck had initially seen, and sometimes after those sessions, the occurrences would disappear for a while. The last one had been a couple of months ago, and at the end his father had hugged him, and whispered, "Hang in there Chuck, help is on its way, just hang in there a little longer." But in the end, nothing had been able to help him.

This was the first occurrence Chuck had had since that last session with his father, and he was surprised as the images he was seeing. A hummingbird flashed first, and then a woman in what looked like a street fight, until she pulled a gun shot the man she was fighting then calmly aiming the gun at what Chuck presumed was a camera, the hummingbird flashed again before the images went to a solid black allowing Chuck to release the breathe that he hadn't even realize he'd been holding. As he allowed his tensed muscles, Lou stopped rubbing his shoulders.

"Wow, Chuck… that was a bad one. I haven't seen one last that long in a while. Are you OK?" Morgan took a seat next to Chuck concern masking his usual jolly face.

"Hmm, what? Yeah, yeah, I'll be OK Morgan, just give me a minute."

"Oh Chuck, how bad was that one?" Lou queried.

"That was a doozy, sorry about that… I hope I didn't ruin lunch."

"Chuck! Stop, we're worried more about you than some sandwiches that I threw together." Lou glared at Morgan, who known about these occurrences since he was a kid and decided his friend was OK enough for him to continue to eat and was in fact in the process of reaching for his sandwich – that was until Lou's death glare.

Chuck took a couple of deep breathes and closing his eyes went quickly through the meditation exercises that Ellie and Devon, her boyfriend, had taught him so he could regain his composure after an occurrence. Finally, feeling back to normal Chuck looked at his two closest friends, "OK, Morgan get the lights and the door before Jeff or Lester comes up with some perverted idea of what's going on in here, and let's get back to these most excellent sandwiches!"

Chuck and company got back to having a great lunch, but he couldn't get his mind off what he had seen. The beautiful blonde fighter seemed to pause and look into his very soul right before shooting the camera. That look of utter fierceness and something else intrigued Chuck and he vowed to find out who she was.

* * *

**The Birthday Party September 18**

The party had been a hit, at least Ellie thought so. As she stood with her arm wrapped through Devon's, she surveyed the crowd in the courtyard, there was Lou one of Chuck's friends talking to one of the resident's in the ER that Devon had invited. The clumps of her and Devon's friends were scattered around the courtyard, and everyone looked to be enjoying themselves, everyone but the guest of honor, who was missing.

"OOOO if he is in the apartment playing video games with Morgan, I am going to kill him!" Ellie muttered under her breath.

"Hey Babe, you know if he is – you could always ground him!" Devon quipped in an effort to calm his suddenly irate girlfriend.

"Zip it Devon, I'm going to find him – I'll be right back."

Ellie quickly made her way to the apartment that she shared with Devon and Chuck. She opened the door preparing to lay into her brother and that bearded friend of his. Though the sight in front of her brought her up short: Morgan was sitting on the couch alone playing a video game chatting to a few of Ellie's co-workers. What surprised Ellie was the distinct absence of her brother.

"Morgan, where is Chuck – he's missing all of the party?"

"Oh hey Ellie, yeah… Chuck tried to hang on as long as he could, but he had an occurrence at work during lunch and it must have been a doozy cause he was kinda out of it for the rest of the afternoon. He told me to tell you he was going to bed and that he was sorry about missing this great party."

Ellie smiled softly at Morgan's protective streak, "Thanks Morgan, I'm going to go check on him real quick."

Ellie made her way quietly down the hall towards Chuck's room. The door was closed but there was a faint light that seeped out from under the door. Ellie softly knocked and opened the door to peek in. She smiled as she noticed that Chuck had fallen asleep on top of his comforter, so she quietly got a blanket from his closet and gently laid it on top of her sleeping brother. She turned to see that the light she had noticed was coming from Chuck's computer monitor which was still on and was showing that Chuck had received an email. She debated about whether to turn it off and let her brother sleep, and finally decided if he woke up in the middle of the night the small light source might help keep from banging his shins or toes into anything.

Turning to leave Ellie bent over her brother's head, kissed the top of it softly, and whispered, "Happy birthday little brother, I will figure out how to stop these headaches somehow. I love you Chuck."

CBCWCBSW

A few hours later, Chuck woke with a start. His eyes snapping open and his body was immediately alert. He listened for any noise that may have been out of the ordinary. There it was again… a hum from his computer, like the CPU was getting taxed running some massive game. Chuck frowned, his computer should never being doing anything like unless Morgan had been doing his research…

"Damn Morgan, watch porn on your own dang computer!" Chuck quietly snarled fearful of waking up Ellie or Devon, somehow knowing instinctively that it was the middle of the night. He swung his long legs over the side of the bed, his hands coming up to cup the sides of his head. He realized that he had been dreaming of the blond woman that was in the flash he had had at lunch. Since the flash she was an almost constant in his thoughts – she was obviously dangerous, that was more than evident, but there was something else about her that kept gnawing at Chuck's psyche.

In an effort to do something to get the mystery woman off of his mind, Chuck sat in front of his computer and logged in. The CPU spinning stopped as Chuck pulled up the list of programs running, and whistled softly at the email that was sucking memory like a thirsty camel.

"What the hell is going on?" Chuck thought as he pulled up his email. There was a new email from Bryce Larkin, his old roommate, with the subject line: Happy Birthday!

"I wonder what Bryce is doing nowadays and why he sent this to me, we haven't talked in a couple of years…" Chuck looked at the attachment, and grinned realizing it was a Zork module. He clicked it to open it and read the line about the troll, as he typed the response of "Attack troll with nasty knife" the screen flashed in front of his eyes with the message: I'm sorry Chuck. Before going blank and Chuck's irritation quickly began to mount as the CPU began to spin again, and then the monitor flashed pictures like his dad's did when Chuck was getting some help from him. These images flashed longer than any of the times with his dad, it was a good thing Chuck was sitting in his chair as he would've crashed to the floor by the time the images stopped and the smell of ion wafted from his overtaxed computer.

"Dammit Bryce, I just built that computer…" Chuck groaned as he slipped to the floor.

* * *

**Help Arrives September 19**

Chuck had barely made it to work on time – actually it had helped that Ellie had checked on him before leaving for her shift at the hospital. He felt like he was waking from a huge hangover, and had grabbed a large coffee before making his way to the shower. While there he had another flash about a general's speaking engagement, and while it had hurt, it was nowhere near as bad as the previous day's one had been.

He had been getting his Nerd Herd badge on when Morgan appeared at the Morgan Door.

"Morning Chuck, ready to head out? Oh, and can I get a ride?"

Chuck grinned at Morgan and nodded, "Sure buddy, let's get out of here."

CBCWCBSW

Getting to the Buy More had been fine, though the added traffic had caused Chuck to blurt out something about the protection duty of the general causing the abnormal jams. Morgan just looked at his friend as if he had grown a second head.

Once in the store, the two buddies had parted ways and Chuck had made his way to the Nerd Herd desk to look over the daily reports that came in from headquarters. Groaning at the notice about the Demova virus – knowing he would have to let the rest of the Herd know.

Getting the patience up so he could talk to the Herd, he let them all know about the virus and dismissed them to carry on, though in the case of Jeff and Lester that meant them finding a hidey hole and slacking off for the rest of their shifts.

Morgan came over to chat about the party, while Chuck kept his head down trying to figure out what if anything could be done about the virus.

"Stop the presses" Morgan exclaims, "who is that! Vicki Vale!"

"Vicki Vale, Vick, Vicki Vale, Vick, Vicki Vale…" Chuck mutters to himself as he reads through the reports. Then in his peripheral vision, he notices a slender hand attached to a slender wrist. Chuck's eyes travel upwards to see a beautiful blonde woman a grin on her face that somehow travelled to her beautiful blue eyes that sparkled with mirth.

"I hope I'm not interrupting", the blonde said suppressed laughter in her voice.

"Uhh, nope, not at all… it's… uh… that's from Batman."

"Oh cause that makes it better right?"

"Ha… ha…" Chuck seemed lost, though his thoughts were tickling the back of his mind with something about this beautiful woman in front of him.

"Hi I'm Morgan, and this, this is Chuck." Morgan said, leaning against the Nerd Herd desk in as slick a way as possible, hoping to portray his coolness to the woman.

"Well it is nice to meet you Morgan and Chuck."

Chuck quickly stood up and asked, "How can I help you…?"

"Sarah."

Chuck grinned at her, "OK, how can I help you Sarah?"

"I'm here to get some help with my phone," she said as she placed the phone on the desk.

"Ahh, the Intellicell. Yeah, absolutely… this is an easy fix. The screw in the back can come loose, so we just tighten it up a little and it should be good as new Sarah." Chuck performed the steps as he explained and handed the phone back to Sarah, who smiled at him.

"Wow, you nerds are good!"

"Thanks, please let me know if you need any other help and we would be glad to lend a hand!"

Sarah smiled at Chuck, "Thanks, I just moved out here from DC, so I may take you up on that."

With that Sarah held out her hand to shake Chuck's hand, Chuck smiled back at the blonde not believing he would ever see her again. At the moment their hands touched, both of their eyes rolled to the back of their heads and they passed out. Luckily for Chuck that meant landing on the desk, and luckily for Sarah that meant Morgan was able to let his inner-hero shine as he grabbed her and gently started to lower her to the floor, except that her hand was still gripping Chuck's hand, causing Morgan to hold on to her not having the coordination to pull the clasped hands apart without dropping the blonde.

"Help, I need some help over here!" Morgan called. Looking at the two people who were still in a dead faint their hands gripping one another like they were grasping lifelines.

* * *

**Post Chapter Author's Note**: I don't usually have a second AN, but I wanted to make sure no one got mad at me for using the second sandwich Chuck and Lou discussed as the Chuck. The first one, made with turkey, muenster, on egg bread just sounds too boring. That and I personally love coleslaw on a pastrami sandwich, if you haven't tried it you really don't know what you're missing!


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note**: I am so sorry this chapter is getting posted so late after Chapter 2. I know I said postings would be sporadic, but I never realized that they would be this far apart. Please bear with me.

Thank you to all of those who have read this story, I do hope you are enjoying it. I want to especially thank those of you that have left reviews. I always love to hear how you feel about this story.

Anyway, enough of that, here is Chapter 3!

* * *

Some interesting information about Load Balancers.

_One of the most important tools within the computing environment is load balancing. A load balancer is a device that spreads network or application traffic across multiple servers or computers. This helps take the strain – or the load – off of certain servers. This means that the servers don't get overworked, which in turn promotes application health in the long run._

\- From the Pinnacle website about load balancing

* * *

**An Emergency September 19**

**~~Previously~~**

With that Sarah held out her hand to shake Chuck's hand, Chuck smiled back at the blonde not believing he would ever see her again. At the moment their hands touched, both of their eyes rolled to the back of their heads and they passed out. Luckily for Chuck that meant landing on the desk, and luckily for Sarah that meant Morgan was able to let his inner-hero shine as he grabbed her and gently started to lower her to the floor, except that her hand was still gripping Chuck's hand, causing Morgan to hold on to her not having the coordination to pull the clasped hands apart without dropping the blonde.

"Help, I need some help over here!" Morgan called. Looking at the two people who were still clasping one another's hand but both were in a dead faint!

**~~Now~~**

"I don't know what happened Ell! Chuck and I were just talking to a young lady who needed help with her phone, and she and Chuck shook hands and then this!"

"Yeah, the EMTs said they had strong vitals…"

"No, no, they couldn't separate their hands though… I'm not sure why though…"

"No, I couldn't fit in the ambulance…"

"Yeah, Lou picked me up and we're right behind the ambulance…"

"Geez Ellie, I don't know what to say. Is Devon on shift?"

"Good, good… so you'll both meet them there?"

"Ok, we will see you there…"

**~~Elsewhere~~**

"Agent, what's the situation?"

"Package was delivered and opened."

"Good, any visible issues with 2.0?"

"No."

"Hmm, ok. What about the Balancer?

"The Balancer was initiated."

"Good, any negative affects?"

"Well maybe…"

"Explain."

"Both of them are on the way to Westside Medical as we speak."

"Damn! You need to follow them and monitor the situation immediately."

"I am tailing the ambulance right now."

"Do I need to get down there?"

"Negative. Let me find out what the situation is and I will fill you in ASAP."

"OK, keep me apprised Agent."

"Understood Sir."

**~~Still Elsewhere~~**

The images came again, quicker and more random (if that was even possible she thought) than ever before. Then they began to slow down before…

She was back on the beach. It was the same beach that she had been visiting for the last few years – sometimes she met the mysterious faceless man with the warm eyes and sometimes she was alone with nothing but the seven palm trees standing sentry behind her. She is standing by the farthest one, her hand up on the rough tree trunk. She feels the wind blowing in from the ocean. The sky and ocean are so blue that it makes the horizon difficult to distinguish. The few white cumulus clouds appear to be lazily making their way toward land. But the only thing she sees is the back of the man. She knows without a doubt it is him.

He is sitting with his knees drawn up to his chin, and his arms clasped around his legs. While she is unable to fully recognize him, something about him reminds her of someone, someone close. She stays by the tree watching him. She gets the feeling he is nervous about something, and that if she approaches it may make the feeling intensify, so she stayed by the tree just watching him. She recognized the connection they had, and somewhere in her psyche she felt that there was something that she could do to help him, something no one else had the capability to do. As she stood there by the tree something began to happen to her, she knew that this man was close by physically in the non-dream world, she knew that her aid would be required soon and that with that realization came the desire to do anything in her power to help. Her eyes widened at this self-realization, and her mouth began to turn upwards in a smile. Yes, yes, she would move heaven and hell to help him. She stood straight and began walking toward him, approaching from his left side.

CBSWCBSWCBSW

He knew this place well. He had been here on many occasions. But this time it was different. He could feel it deep down. There was a significance to this time that had been absent in all of the previous visits, but while he knew something was going to happen he didn't know what exactly. As he sat watching the waves, he realized something – this was the first time he was here before her. The beautiful blonde woman had always been here first, but he didn't see her as he sat. This caused his anxiety to grow a little, did that mean she was gone? He hoped not. In all of his previous times here he had grown close to the woman, whoever she was. They would sometimes talk about things, small inconsequential things, deep philosophical subjects, and random thoughts that seemed to enter one of their heads. Through all of it though, he slowly realized that whoever the woman was she was his ideal. Maybe that is why the dreams left him feeling happy and sad – happy to have someone that felt so close to him, but sad that she was only a dream. He chuckled to himself – only his overactive nerd-brain would come up with the impossibly perfect woman.

CBSWCBSWCBSW

He heard the footsteps in the sand as they got nearer to where he was sitting. He didn't dare look up - his luck just couldn't be that good. Then he heard someone sit down on his left side, and in his peripheral vision he saw what could only be a woman's foot with red nail polish on the toes.

"Hey", a voice said and everything clicked. It was her.

Chuck looked up still daring not to believe this could be happening. And this time instead of the dreamlike vision of a woman's face he saw her. A mouth that was slowly curving into a smile that led to a straight nose that continued on to two of the bluest eyes. Chuck's breath caught, those startling beautiful eyes were somehow sparkling in the sunlight. It really was her.

Chuck's small tenuous grin grew slowly until it split his face and wrinkled his brow.

**~~Westside Medical ER Ambulance Bay~~**

"We have two patients. Both of their vitals are strong, but they appear to be in a coma or something. Also, we tried to unclasp their hands but we were unable to do so and we didn't want to break fingers or anything."

Ellie stared at the two people on hospital beds in front of her. She marveled that they had been able to get them into and out of the ambulance and onto the beds. Ellie had done her due diligence, rechecking vitals and ordering the standard lab tests. Her eyes continued to be drawn to the two hands that were tightly clasped together trying to determine what may have caused this bizarre medical… she wasn't even sure what to call it.

As she stood between the two people, one being her brother and the other a strikingly beautiful blonde woman, Ellie jumped a little when a hand grasped her shoulder.

"Whoa there Babe, I'm sorry I startled you. So what's going on with Chuck, and who is that woman he is holding hands with?"

"Morgan told me what had happened."

"I saw the little bearded man out in the waiting room hanging out with Lou – I hate to say it but I ducked in here as fast as I could so I could avoid talking with him."

"Ha! Well he was the only one there when it happened."

"So?" Devon tried hard not to laugh as his girlfriend's face once again appeared to blank out as she started to think.

"Hmm? What? Oh. Sorry, yeah, yeah… So this is what Morgan told me."

Ellie related everything that Morgan had seen and experienced from the time the beautiful woman, her name was Sarah Morgan had informed Ellie in a very dreamy voice when he had said the name, walked in to when she and Chuck had shaken hands to the faint. Of course Morgan had to go into great detail of how wonderfully beautiful Sarah was, but Ellie had stopped him from waxing too eloquent when he started comparing her eyes to a tranquil ocean cove.

"I am just not sure what is going on Devon. Both of them appear fine, besides the hand clasping – which is interesting. Morgan said they shook hands when they collapsed, but not their hands have entwined like they were a couple on a walk on the beach. And neither of the EMTs even noticed when it changed."

"Well Ellie, what are you thinking?"

"I have an EEG on its way – I can only think that there must be something neurological about this. Cause everything else appears one hundred percent healthy. I just don't understand what is going on Devon, and that scares me. Chuck is all that I have left."

Devon leaned over and pulled his girlfriend into a one-armed hug and whispered in her ear, "It'll be OK Babe, Chuck is made of strong stuff. Besides maybe he was shocked by the gorgeous woman who just wanted to shake his hand in gratitude for helping out."

Ellie just shook her head at Devon's comments knowing that he was attempting to put some humor into the stressful situation that they both found themselves in at the moment.

"Devon, honey", Ellie asked in her sweetest voice. "Can you do me a huge favor?"

Before realizing that he was being set up, Devon smiled and replied, "Anything Babe, you name it." And he flashed his winning grin at Ellie.

"Well, I feel terrible that Morgan and Lou have been sitting in the waiting room without any word. Would you go and let them know what's going on? Until I can get an EEG test done I don't have a whole lot to tell them."

"Sure thing Ellie, I will let Lou and the Bearded One know." He gave Ellie the grin again, gave a quick peck on the cheek and left to deliver what little news they had to Morgan and Lou.

**~~Somewhere Else in Westside Medical~~**

The orderly quietly moved to what he hoped was an unused room, and stepped inside when he saw that it was indeed void of any occupants. He pulled out a cell phone, hit a button and held it up to his ear.

"Hello Agent."

"Here is the situation. After opening the package, both the Prime and the Balancer collapsed into some kind of coma-like state."

"OK, it is probably the 2.0 resetting itself. Do you know anything else?"

"There doesn't appear to be any problems other than what I just stated. Your daughter took charge of them upon arrival. Her boyfriend just showed up a few minutes ago but has gone to inform the civilians that followed the ambulance. I did hear your daughter say that she was waiting for an EEG to test anything."

"Hmm, all right – if Ellie is able to get an EEG test done try and get a copy of the results that may be helpful to know what's going on and possibly avoid a complete reset in future iterations."

"Copy."

"Any word from the Alphabets yet?"

"General Beckman has an inkling of what is going on, and I assume CIA does too. I think it is just a matter of time before they send additional agents to find out what's going on. Unless we can move the Prime and the Balancer soon we may have to figure something out."

"Understood, I can head off any suspicion for now at least long enough for 2.0 to finish the reset. Once that happens we can determine our next steps."

"OK, how long do you think it will take?"

"Anywhere from 1 to 3 more hours – the Prime had a standard refresh six months ago, but the Balancer hasn't had a refresh in two years, Graham never let her off a mission."

"All right, I will stay close in case an Alphabet shows up."

"I'm more worried about our other problem – they can be rather indiscriminate in their violence."

"Agree, but I'm kinda itching for a little gunfight… it's been too long."

"Not in your current location and not with Intersect down like it is. I haven't seen any indication that they know something is going on though, so maybe we slipped under their radar this time."

"Only until the CIA mole gets a whiff of something…"

"Understood. OK, I will run any necessary interference on the Alphabets, please keep an eye on the Prime and the Balancer."

"You know I will Orion… with my life."

"I know you will Agent Vida, I know you will."

* * *

**Author's Second Note**: If you know who some of the characters are, PLEASE don't post it. I promise the next Chapter will be more focused on Chuck and Sarah. I had to get everything set up first. Thanks again for reading, and please post a review.


	4. Chapter 4

Chuck vs. the Load Balancer – Chapter 4

**Author's Note**: Thank you for the patience that you have had to give me to get this story out. I am glad that many of you are liking it so far, I hope this chapter meets all of your expectations.

* * *

**Another note on load balancing**:

_Beyond just having multiple infrastructure resources, load balancing often involves duplication of content and application workloads, such that more than one copy of a resource can be accessed._

\- From the serverwatch website on load balancing

* * *

**Balancing Beginnings**

Chuck looked into the sapphire depths of the woman's eyes, no longer the stranger of his dreams, he knew her name.

"Sarah…", he whispered almost to himself.

Sarah smiled gently at him, "Hi Chuck. I'm so glad that I can put a name to the beach guy. I was so scared that you were a figment of my imagination."

"Heh, yeah… I know the feeling."

The two looked at each other for another minute before turning to look at the waves as they came ashore.

"So… well… um… I've never asked, but how did this happen Sarah? I know why I'm here, but how did you get here? That is if… well… I don't know if that is too personal a question… but…."

"It's OK Chuck, I can tell you what I know. But there are some things that you probably can't know."

"Oh… yeah… I mean I don't want to pry into your personal life… I mean boyfriends… that kind of thing…"

"Chuck! Slow down! That isn't what I'm talking about – though yeah… that IS kinda personal, but we've been meeting in this dream? Hallucination? I'm not sure what to call it… for years now…"

"The Intersect."

Sarah's eyes glazed over and began quickly roaming, before stopping and she turned to look at Chuck.

"Oh, that is what it's called. How come you know? And even more importantly how did _you_ get here?"

Chuck smiled, knowing somehow in his heart that he could trust this woman. Sarah was correct, they had been meeting here long enough that he implicitly knew he would trust her with his life.

"Well Sarah, that's quite a story. I guess it begins with a note that my mom left a long time ago and what happened when I was ten years old…"

Chuck then told Sarah everything. From the first time wandering into his Dad's office and downloading an incomplete Intersect that his dad was working on to help an old friend. The same friend that had caused his mom to disappear without a trace – which in turn caused his dad to lose sight of his two children and focus solely on his Intersect research. To this day Chuck still didn't know the full story except that his Dad and his Dad's best friend had been working on the original Intersect in the closing days of the Cold War when something had happened.

Chuck grimaced as he told of the first time he had an "occurrence". It had happened in front of Morgan who had completely freaked out and screamed for Ellie and Chuck's dad. When they had arrived Chuck was on the floor of the living room clutching his head in a fetal position crying and yelling for the images to stop.

Sarah at this point was watching Chuck and softly put her hand on his arm in an effort to comfort him a little.

Chuck grinned at her, "Actually that first Flash, as my Dad and I began to call them, was a good thing. Because that is when he stopped looking for ways to help his friend and focused on helping me instead. He started to look more and more into ways to balance the load of the Intersect. See his theory that the brain was a large computer was correct, but pulling that information the way the Intersect was set up tended to overload the processor – in other words the Intersect was too powerful for just one person."

"So… does that mean…" Sarah couldn't finish the sentence. The answer was too immense to her… because she knew the answer.

Chuck looked at her as Sarah retracted her hand from his arm. She pulled her legs up in front of her chest and wrapped her arms around them, then leaned her head so her face was hidden by her arms.

"Chuck?" Sarah's voice was quiet and in that one word question full of concern and fear.

"Yes Sarah, you have the Intersect too. I'm sorry…."

Sarah heard something in his voice. A fear that mirrored her own – a fear that something that had recently been found might be taken away – a fear of being alone again. And Sarah knew somehow that she couldn't do that to him. Not the kind man that she had known since that night while working on the Omaha Project. Not the man who was her stabilizer.

"So Chuck… please tell me the rest." Sarah said, turning her head toward him and staring into those brown eyes that were full of trepidation and fear. "How did you and I get here?"

Chuck sighed, realizing that she wasn't leaving – that she wanted to hear the rest of the story. So he told her. He told her how his father went to the government and pitched the idea to the Alphabets, how the FBI and DOD's DARPA snubbed him as crazy, while the NSA and the CIA were interested. How his dad continued to refine the code and how he tried to help Chuck control the flashes after failing to find a way to extract the Intersect from his son's brain. How his dad told Chuck that while Ellie and Morgan knew of the "occurrences", they could never know of the full extent of the Intersect. Instead they were told that Chuck had a condition that caused severe and debilitating migraines.

Chuck stopped talking for a minute, and then taking a deep sigh. "Sarah, this went on for years. Dad worked with the two Alphabets to find a candidate. Someone who could handle the Intersect – and by that time the information wasn't causing the flashes to cause migraines, of course we didn't know this because none of the candidates that were tested had been viable Intersect agents. Dad started to lose hope and was beginning to think that maybe he should focus more on suppressing the Intersect instead of removing it from me. But then you came along."

Sarah's breath caught and she stared at Chuck, who once again looked afraid that she would bolt at that information.

"Sarah, this is where your story with the Intersect begins. My dad never told me that he had found you. By that time, he only had remote contact with Ellie and I as he was nervous that someone in the Alphabets was looking to use the Intersect for something other than to help people – something that scared my dad from the first time he and his friend had discovered it in the first place. So how did you get to be in Project Omaha?"

Sarah put her head back down and tears filled her eyes. She didn't want to tell Chuck of her past for the same reason he hadn't wanted to tell her about how the two of them came to be in the Intersect. If she told him, he would run, he would want to get away from her and her crazy and violence-ridden life. And she would once again be alone…

* * *

**Orion and the Alphabets**

"General Beckman? Are you in a secure location?"

"Yes, I am. Orion? Is that you?"

"Yes, yes. I wanted to let you know that it appears it has worked."

The line was quiet for a minute.

"General. You need to know that it worked and we have an actual working Intersect."

"What? I heard you the first time. Did my agent find them?"

"Yes, Major Casey was able to replicate Larkin's email and get the most recent update to the Prime. That triggered Graham's sending of Agent Walker as we knew he would."

"All right. But that doesn't prove Graham is corrupt – does it?"

"No General it doesn't. Yet."

"OK, where is Agent Larkin now and what's the status with the Prime and the Balancer now?"

"I don't know where Larkin has disappeared to, he told me that he had to find something out about a Red Test and that he would contact when he had more information. Both the Prime and the Balancer are at Westside Medical and appear to be in a coma-like state."

"WHAT?! And you're just telling me now? Where is Major Casey?"

"The Major is with them and is on protective duty. This is only temporary General. The Intersect had to reset itself, and share the updates with the Balancer as she was a couple of years behind."

"Yes, yes, I know. After appearing to shut down Project Omaha we couldn't very well continue to upload new upgrades to Agent Walker, not with how close she is to Graham. Are you sure we can trust her though Orion? Agent Walker is Graham's wild card, his enforcer. She cleans up the messes and she does it ruthlessly. I'm not sure…"

"General, believe me when I say this: I trust Agent Walker with the Prime's life, and no one else. Not even Major Casey has more trust in my eyes."

"OK Orion, we will go with your judgement on this. What's next?"

"Once the Intersect completes the reset and the load balancing protocols, the two of them should awake and be fine."

"Will they be field ready?"

"I believe so, yes. Will you help protect the Prime though?"

"You have my word Orion."

The line was again quiet, "I will hold you to that Dianne…"

"I know you will Stephen, I know you will."

Click… the line went dead and the small General began to think of the next moves in the game of espionage that she was engaged in.

* * *

**Westside Medical Waiting Room**

Morgan Grimes was tired of waiting. This had to be the worst thing to happen to his best friend in so long. The only time it was worse was that first time he had witnessed one of Chuck's occurrences as they had been playing Super Mario Brothers. It had freaked him out then, but this – this was at a whole new level.

Morgan began hyperventilating as he kept circling around the idea that he might just lose Chuck. That is when he felt a small hand on the back of his neck gently rubbing and pushing his head down between his knees.

"Breathe Morgan, breathe…" Lou whispered in his ear. "Chuck is going to be all right. Ellie and Devon won't let anything bad happen to him. You know that and I know that… so breathe… OK?"

Lou continued to calmly talk to him and slowly Morgan's breathing returned to normal. He closed his eyes and concentrated on Lou's words and her hand as it gently but firmly held him down. It felt good, that small hand on the back of his neck. Lou's words softly made him calmer and calmer, and he thought how great of a friend Lou was to both him and Chuck.

"Thanks Lou."

Lou realizing that Morgan was no longer hyperventilating stopped putting the pressure on his neck and Morgan sat up.

"Thanks for driving me over here, and for staying."

"Chuck's my friend too Morgan, you know that and I am just as worried as you are."

"I know you are – I know you are."

Unconsciously, Morgan sat up and took Lou's hand in his.

"Just thanks for being such a great friend to us both Lou."

Lou smiled as she held Morgan's hand in hers and waited with him for news of their friend.

* * *

**They Couldn't Hide Forever**

"Status Agent."

"The Major is in LA as is the Enforcer."

"Do you know why?"

"Not yet sir, we are working on it."

"Not good enough. LA is too close to Rourke Industries for this to be a coincidence. We are sending Tommy as back up. I want this situation figured out ASAP."

"Sir, do you think sending Fulcrum muscle is a bit much? I mean we don't even know if RI is the target yet."

"I have a feeling Fulcrum is going to be needed. You agents in Volkoff Industries sometimes get too hung up on playing with your gadgets and toys that you forget that some situations just need a little more… physical… persuasion."

"Yes sir. I will inform Tommy of the current situation when he arrives."

"Good, and if anything changes, inform me immediately."

"Yes sir."

* * *

**Westside Medical Neurological Wing, Room 2**

Ellie was frustrated.

There was nothing on either Sarah or Chuck's EEG readings that appeared out of the ordinary. There were spikes in the readings but as neither of them seemed to be in any distress Ellie couldn't figure out what was causing them. Though as she stood between the two beds where her patients were laying still holding hands she continued to look at the individual read outs.

"Oh Chuck, what is going on?"

Ellie was getting more and more worried, and then she had a thought and placed the two read outs side by side. Her breathe caught in her chest as Ellie stared at the read outs.

They were spiking at exactly the same time.

"My God, they are syncing…"

Ellie raised her hand to her mouth in shock.

"Dad… what did you do?"

* * *

**Complete Reset**

As Sarah panicked at what was being asked of her, she knew that she couldn't share everything with Chuck. He would panic being this close to a killer, to the Ice Queen, to Graham's Wild-card Enforcer, to a myriad of other names and titles each more soul crushing than the last. As Sarah's thoughts continued to spiral, she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. Her breathing caught again in her chest and with a large amount of trepidation, she turned her tear-stained face toward Chuck, and what she saw surprised her.

Chuck was looking at her with concern and kindness, and something else that Sarah couldn't begin to put into words. But somehow it touched her, and she knew Chuck would never judge her for her past.

"I'm sorry Chuck."

"Don't be Sarah, and please don't ever feel that you need to tell me anything. You and I are in a situation that no one else on this planet has ever been in, and as such we can and should cut each other a whole lot of slack. OK?"

She smiled at him and softly whispered, "Thanks Chuck that means a lot."

Chuck squeezed her shoulder and smiled gently at her, "Yeah, yeah, um… no problem. I am wondering how you got here. I mean… I know we have been meeting here for a while, but I've never thought to ask how you got here. You don't have to ans…"

"Well, I volunteered for a program that the CIA was conducting, I had been an agent for a couple of years by that time, and with my record I was approached and asked if I was interested, and after thinking about it I chose to volunteer. The program was supposed to be a way to help train agents quicker and get them to the peak of their skills without putting them in the field, and I was supposed to be one of the control group."

"Ahh, I see. Did any of it hurt?"

"No, the only thing I couldn't figure out were the dreams, they seemed like just random pictures with no pattern", Sarah let out a soft chuckle, "Well… until I met you."

Chuck smiled, and murmured, "Oh that's good, I'm glad you weren't hurt by the flashes."

Sarah noticed Chuck's attitude had changed, "Do the flashes hurt you Chuck?"

Chuck looked at her, and she was startled by the feelings she could see telegraphed across his face. His eyes especially. They tightened around the edges and the color went darker brown and the irises widened as he held his breath slightly.

After what seemed like hours of looking at her, Chuck turned and let out the breath he was holding and as he stared out to sea, he nodded. Small. Like he hoped that Sarah wouldn't noticed the tiny movement of his chin as it moved up and down slightly.

Before she realized what she was doing, Sarah eliminated the small distance between them and threw her arm across his shoulders and leaned her head on his shoulder.

"Oh Chuck, I'm sorry."

Chuck's hand crossed over his chest and grabbed Sarah's hand that was on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze, "Thanks Sarah."

"You're welcome. So I have a question or two, do you think the reset is finished and if it is, how do we get out of here?"

Chuck chuckled to himself, "Why Miss Walker, are you anxious to be rid of me that quickly?"

She bumped his shoulder with hers, "No Chuck, but all of a sudden I have a craving for a large margarita with an umbrella in it and some decent Mexican food – that is if you're game – I mean I don't know Burbank that well and thought maybe you would be gentleman and take a …." At that point Sarah stopped and came to a sudden conclusion of how she was sitting with Chuck, her arm and head on his shoulder while he was holding her hand. It felt natural. It felt right. It felt scary as hell to her and she pulled her hand away and sat up straighter. In her haste, she didn't see the look of disappointment appear and disappear quickly on Chuck's face.

"Oh yeah, I would love to grab dinner with you. Now let's figure out how to get out of here, cause the reset has to have finished, right?"

Chuck stood up and turned, reaching down to offer Sarah his right hand, and she smiled and with her left hand grabbed his hand and as he pulled her to her feet. Chuck must have pulled too hard though because instead of coming to her feet she felt pulled into Chuck's chest, and the two of them fell backward into some kind of bright light.

* * *

**Introductions… of a Sort**

Ellie was the first one to notice that something different was happening. Chuck's deep breathing continued, but the movement of his eyes that had been rapidly moving back and forth as though he was in REM sleep had stopped. She held her breath as she waited to see if there were any other signs of either of the two people in front of her waking up. Ellie smiled as Sarah let out a groan like someone would make who had been fast asleep and wanted to stay that way.

At that point Ellie made an executive decision and called Devon, instructing him to get Morgan and Lou to join her in the room with Chuck and Sarah as they were coming out of whatever episode they had been in.

The bright light of the hospital room made Chuck throw his forearm over his closed eyes as he made one of those waking groans, "Who turned on the lights? Can't you see that someone is trying to sleep?"

Ellie quickly moved to dim the lights as much as possible, hoping that her patients would be more responsive without the glare of the room lights beaming down on them. Once that was done, Ellie moved back to stand between the two beds. Her eyes still looking at the various medical instruments that her brother and the woman were connected to and satisfied that nothing was wrong, at least medically speaking.

"Ellie, is that you?"

Ellie's breath caught in her throat and she moved quickly to pull Chuck up and into a bear hug.

"Oh Chuck, I was so scared!"

Chuck's returned the hug, as much as he could as he was still holding the other woman's hand.

"It's fine Ellie… I'm fine. I promise." Chuck wheezed out with what little oxygen he could get into his lungs.

Ellie released her brother just as the others arrived in the room. Devon using his moniker as a greeting, while Lou smiled and Morgan almost crushed Ellie as he moved to hug his best friend.

When the greetings were finally made, the four stepped back to look at their friend and brother. He smiled shyly at them until he noticed that his hand was still entwined with Sarah's, who was finally coming around enough to sit up. She smiled at Chuck after noticing that his hand was still firmly holding hers and giving it an occasional squeeze. When she stopped looking at Chuck and realized where she was and that there were other people in the room with them, Sarah gasped and readied to fight through them all.

"It's OK Sarah, this is my family. Family, this is Sarah. She is here to help me."

* * *

**Author's Note Part Two**: There ya go, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I wanted to point out that someone commented on the ballet dancer, actually I have that in the plans because I love that scene, so it will be in this story, just in a different spot. I am planning to get our pair out on their first mission in the next chapter, and to be the Major. Thank you for reading and for the previous reviews, they have made my day.


	5. Chapter 5

Chuck vs. the Load Balancer – Chapter 5

**Author's Note:**

Sorry for the delay in posting this, thank you all for the favorites, follows, and reviews. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Oh and I am not making any money on this story, it is just for fun.

**On load balancing:**

_By spreading the work evenly, load balancing improves application responsiveness. It also increases availability of applications and websites for users. Modern applications cannot run without load balancers._

\- From the avinetworks website on load balancing

**Who is this guy?**

If there was a soundtrack that would be appropriate to listen to as the man walked it would come from a horror movie, probably the cello portion of Jaws as the man could well be compared to a large oceanic alpha predator. The expensive shoe heels clicked on the floor as he continued his journey down the hall to the conference room.

He opened the door and took a seat that the table looking at the large screen at one end of the room.

"What have you found out?" The voice was female and the speaker was in shadows, quite over the top but the man was used to the secrecy and agreed it helped, though at times it felt like he was in a bad James Bond story.

"The pieces are being moved, and I am certain of the location of the Intersect."

"Good, do you have a time frame for the next phase?"

"No. I have sent my best agent there, but as she is not aware of our mission, I have to be careful with handling the situation."

"Then why didn't you use someone else? Tommy is already on his way, he could be used."

"No. Tommy is not used to this type of mission. You know he is more suited for…"

"Clean-up, yes, we know." The voice held just a trace of annoyance in it for the man to know that he was still in a good position to control the situation that they had found themselves in.

"Agent Walker will be able to access the situation and report back with minimal footprint."

"As long as you can guarantee that she remains in the dark about us."

"Yes, I can."

"Good, then keep us apprised of the situation as much as possible. Tommy will contact Rourke and stay in a holding pattern until advised differently."

"Thank you Elder, I will do so."

The link went dead and the man got up and began to walk back to his car. His thoughts whirling with moves and counter-moves for the game that was being played – he knew his ace was ready and willing to be put into the field, but the man didn't think he was in a position to have to use him yet.

"Let Agent Walker handled this for now, as far as the agency is concerned this is a valid op."

The man smiled as he got into his non-descript car and drove out of the underground parking lot. His plan was working perfectly and in a very short time he would be able to take a position as a Ring Elder.

**Introductions of a Sort**

Chuck couldn't believe his luck. She was real. In the back of his mind he always knew that the dream woman was a real person out there in the world, doing whatever she did for a profession, engaging in conversations with her real life friends, and living her real life.

To finally meet her, and finally get some help… and even better – she seemed even more beautiful in real life than in their dream world.

Chuck smiled as he remembered the conversation his father had had with him a few years ago. It was right before Stephen had to drop off of the grid because of some problem with the Alphabet agencies. It had happened right after one of the occurrences had receded to allow Chuck recover some functionality from the debilitating headache.

"_Chuck, son, can we talk?" Stephen motioned his son into his small bedroom in the apartment he shared with Ellie._

"_Sure Dad, but can you go a little slow? Just had a doozy of a flash."_

"_Well… that's what I wanted to talk to you about. I think I may have made some progress on a permanent solution, one that won't rely on having to make sure the governor watch is calibrated correctly. See because it is an external control the governor will always have a problem staying within the parameters you need. If you bump it or you don't have it on all of the time or, God forbid, someone takes it from you, the governor gets out of sync with the Intersect. I am sorry that it wasn't a permanent solution Son."_

_Stephen's head bowed as he stood in front of his son._

"_Dad," Chuck whispered as he slowly stood and put a hand on his dad's shoulder. "You have been trying to get this figured out for years now. I know that the governor wasn't meant to be the last thing, but it has helped, and I want you to know that I am grateful for it. Please don't beat yourself up about it. Now tell me about this permanent solution."_

_Stephen raised his head, marveling at how wonderful his children were. He smiled as he moved to stand in front of Chuck's window._

"_Well Son, I have thought for a long time that what was needed was a way for you to share the load of the Intersect with someone else. The problem is that your brain is so amazing that finding someone that would be able to meet that criteria would be very difficult. However, one of the Alphabets has asked me to do some research and I have figured that I can use request to find someone to share the load. Chuck, I think I will be able to find your Balancer." _

_Stephen's smile brightened the room and Chuck was smiling at not only his father's frenetic enthusiasm but the idea that the flashes that had plagued him might have an end in the near future._

"_How long Dad?"_

_Stephen's smile faltered and he coughed, "I'm not sure. The project is set to begin in a couple of months, and I am hoping that the candidates I've been given will be able to do the job. I don't know though, I'm sorry."_

"_It's OK Dad, I am grateful that you're even trying."_

Chuck had had to wait almost a year before the first dream with Sarah after that conversation. And while the flashes continued, they weren't usually as debilitating as they had been in the past.

A sharp pain hit Chuck in the ribs.

"Ouch! What Ellie? What was that for?"

"I have been talking to you Chuck for the past five minutes. We need to get some things figured out before I can let you go home."

Chuck stared at the look of irritation on Ellie's face, and then turned when Devon softly chuckled and continued to turn his head to look at Sarah whose face was stone but the twinkle in her blue eyes belied how humorous she was finding the situation between the siblings.

"Sorry, was thinking about Dad…" Chuck admitted a little shamefacedly.

Ellie just stared at her brother her mouth open, shaking her head, "OK Chuck, so after shaking hands with Sarah you don't remember what happened?"

"Nope", Chuck drew out the "P" in the word.

"Well… there isn't anything else really. All of your vitals are good and neither of you appear to have hit yours heads during your collapse."

"No luckily for us Morgan was there and was able to catch Sarah before she hit the floor."

"Yes, we are lucky that he was there. All right Chuck, can you wait outside in the hall with Devon while I check Sarah and if she checks out I will you both discharged and out of here."

Chuck stood up, glad he wasn't wearing one of the hospital gowns anymore. "Sure, we'll be right outside Sarah if you need anything."

Sarah also stood, smiled and nodded. Ellie noticed that as Chuck left the room Sarah and her brother brushed hands as they passed one another, almost like two low powered magnets being just barely in range of attraction to one another.

Sarah smiled as she sat down in front of Ellie.

"Well Sarah, let's start with some basic information to make sure your mind wasn't affected."

"Sure, Doctor Bartowski."

"Oh, please call me Ellie." Ellie smiled at the blonde woman sitting in front of her.

And with that, the two women began to form a relationship as Ellie tried to find out about this woman and see if the suspicion that her father might be involved with what happened would prove true.

**Angel of Life**

Major John Casey was intrigued. As he sat in his Crown Vic backed into a somewhat obscure parking spot in the hospital parking lot watching the group of people exit the building. He saw the Prime as Orion called him, Casey chuckled softly to himself humored by the idea Orion wouldn't call Chuck his son over the lines as he was so paranoid some Ring agent might have been able to hack their way through the immense security Orion had put into place.

Chuck was talking to his sister and another doctor who looked like he could fill in as Captain America. Casey noted that Morgan and another short brunette woman had already left, presumably to get their car, which Casey had heard as he surreptitiously had listened to the group's conversation while in the hospital posing as an orderly. He knew that the short brunette, Lou, had driven and had volunteered to drive both Chuck and the Balancer to their respective homes.

A small vehicle pulled up in front of the group, and Morgan hopped out of the passenger side and opened the rear door giving a hand to help the tall blonde woman Casey knew as the Balancer, and as Sarah Walker: Graham's Wild Card Enforcer into the car before closing the door and rushing to the other side opening the door for Chuck.

Just as the car moved to leave the parking lot with Casey following at a distance, Casey's phone rang. Glancing at the screen and seeing the familiar number, Casey answered.

"Hello General."

"Major Casey, what is the situation now?"

"Both the Prime and the Balancer have left the hospital together. I am discreetly tailing them, but I'm not sure what their final destination is yet."

"OK, I received a call from Graham. It appears that he doesn't know who the Intersect was sent to yet, but he wants our help. I asked him if he had any assets on the ground, and he only mentioned Agent Walker."

"OK, Ma'am. How should I proceed?"

"I want you to contact Agent Walker. I am in the process of setting up covers for both of you. Graham must not find out about the Prime yet. So you and Agent Walker will have to work together to make sure that doesn't happen. We still are not one hundred percent sure that Graham is or isn't a member of the Ring, so we have to assume he is for the time being."

"I can do that Ma'am."

"Good, I will get the information of Agent Walker's location to you ASAP as well as your covers. Now I must impress upon you the importance of this mission. The protection of the Prime and now the Balancer takes precedent. Do you understand?"

"Yes General, I understand."

"Good, I knew you would Major Casey. This might be the chance to finally get rid of the Ring."

Casey grunted, "I hope so General."

"Good luck Major, the info will be sent shortly."

The line went dead, and Casey put the phone in his pocket as he tailed the two most important people to national security.

**Driving Miss Walker**

Morgan turned around from where he was sitting in the passenger seat of Lou's Honda, "So… Sarah – um… where can we drop you off?"

Sarah turned from looking out the window as she was trying to decide her next move "Oh, well, I am at the Maison23. Do you know where it is?"

Lou waves a hand, "Yeah, I do. I will be glad to drop you off; did you need to pick up your car from the Buy More parking lot though?"

"Oh, uh…"

"I think with everything that has happened I don't think either Sarah or I should be driving. I mean if that's all right Sarah? Morgan can pick up the Nerd Herder after he and Lou drop us off and then I can swing by your apartment tomorrow morning on my way to work to take you to your car… I mean, if that's all right with you Sarah." Chuck turned and looked at her.

Sarah looked into Chuck's eyes, and saw that there was not deception, not an ounce of guile, and it surprised her. She was more used to dealing with those that had another motive hidden inside a plan that was buried in a scheme and then wrapped in a plot. Sarah was unused to the openness that she saw in Chuck. And it caused something to spark within her, though the spark was admittedly very small and went almost unnoticed by her at the time.

Just as Sarah was about to answer Chuck, his phone buzzed. His eyes widen and a slight blush blossomed on his cheeks.

"Oh, sorry Sarah, it's Big Mike – I had better take this."

Hitting a button on the phone, Chuck answered, "Hi Big Mike. What's that? Yeah, I am feeling a lot better."

Pause.

"What? No she isn't planning on suing the Buy More, I can check though." Chuck looked at Sarah as he cupped the phone to muffle their conversation.

"Sarah, you're not planning on suing the Buy More after what happened are you?"

Sarah was taken aback at the question, given that she hadn't even considered that action. Then thinking quickly, she pursed her lips, "Hmm, maybe I should for emotional turmoil and the hospital bills, that ambulance ride isn't going to be cheap… and having just moved here…" She cupped her right elbow and with her right index finger tapped on her bottom lip looking as though she was deep in thought.

She noticed in her peripheral vision that Chuck was looking somewhat frantic and that Morgan had spun in the passenger chair looking at her like she had grown a second head.

"Sarah?" Chuck made her name a question.

She turned and grinned at him, "No Chuck, I'm not planning on suing Buy More. But I am looking for a good if Big Mike knows of any leads it would be helpful."

Chuck continued to stare at her, "You want to work at the Buy More?"

"Well, I'm not lying that I just moved here and that I need a job, so if there is an opening, sure."

Morgan looked like Christmas had come early, "That would be so cool Chuck. I'm sure Big Mike could find something, he has been trying to find replacement for Harry Tang for a while. What do you think Sarah, do you think you could manage a bunch of Buy Morians?"

"Yeah, I think could. If Mike wants to give me a shot."

"Hey Big Mike, no Sarah isn't planning on suing, but she is looking for a job…." Chuck nodded his head at something Big Mike said, "Sarah, do you have any college education?"

"Yeah, Harvard."

Again the stares, this time even Lou looked at Sarah through the rearview mirror, "Dang Sarah, that is SO COOL!"

"Thanks Lou."

"Yeah Big Mike, she went to Harvard… OK, we can swing by." With that Chuck ended the phone call and turned to Sarah.

"Big Mike said to come on in and fill out an application. I know you probably don't have a resume and that you're not ready for an interview, but I think I heard Big Mike drooling over the phone, something about having a Stanford AND Harvard graduate at his store would put the Beverly Hills store to shame. But, are you sure about this Sarah… it is the Buy More…"

"Well Chuck, it is either the Buy More or the Weinerlicious had a job opening sign I noticed when I was walking into the Buy More."

Lou and Chuck both shivered at that, though Morgan closed his eyes, "Their corndogs are soo good!"

"OK, well I tried to warn you! Lou, I guess we are heading over to the Buy More!"

Morgan yelled, "Tally ho!" pointing forward like he was commanding a regiment of knights. Sarah laughed as the foursome continued their way to the Buy More and a possible job.

**Job Interview and Ballerinas**

The parking lot at the Buy More and surrounding stores was only partially full, but being a weekday morning Chuck wasn't surprised. Lou pulled up to the front of the Buy More turning around and smiling at Sarah, "Hey Sarah, good luck. I hope that we will get to see you again soon!"

Smiling back at her Sarah nodded her head and quickly agreed, "Yeah that would be nice, though hopefully without having to deal with a hospital stay. And thank you so much for driving us here, I really appreciate it."

"Of course, I am glad you and Chuck are OK now. You both kind of had us a little scared."

Morgan had been watching the two women and was emphatically nodding his head, "Yeah, let's not do that again, please! All right my favorite purveyor of all things sandwiching, I better get in there, my shift starts in ten minutes."

With that Morgan, Chuck (who thanked Lou as he was getting out of the car), and Sarah (who thanked Lou again) got out of the car. Morgan grinned at the two of them, "This is your last chance to run Sarah! But good luck anyway, not that you'll need it. All right Chuck, I am off. Do you need anything?"

Chuck shook his head, "Nope I am feeling great! I think I may come in and check on those invoices I asked Lester to finish."

"Ha! Yeah, I can guarantee those will need to be done, come on – it's Lester, the only one better at slacking is…" Morgan looked thoughtful for a few seconds, "oh yeah, that would be me!" He grinned widely and turned to walk through the front doors.

Chuck finding he was alone with Sarah turned to her and said, "While Morgan was joking, I am not. Are you sure you want to do this? You would have to figure out how to manage Morgan, and honestly he is the easiest one of the Green Shirts."

"Green Shirts?"

"Yeah, the Green Shirts are the sales associates on the floor. Then there is the Nerd Herders, which is my group. We are the tech support and sometimes have to do onsite installs and other emergency type jobs. And then Big Mike is the manager of the store, he used to have an Assistant Manager, but he left a couple of years ago. No one was sure why though. And Mike hasn't found someone to replace him with."

"What about you?"

"Um, I was asked, but no thanks. I like doing the Herding, it gives me an excuse to get out of the store sometimes. Of course one of these days I will leave Buy More and never return. But I'm still working on that."

Sarah noticed Chuck was a little hesitant to talk about that, so she didn't push.

"Well… I know it isn't a great job and nothing I would call a career but I do need to be close to you. Until I can figure out what to do about the whole Intersect and Balancing thing anyway."

"All right Sarah, don't say we didn't warn ya!" Chuck laughed a little as he directed into the store.

Chuck walked with Sarah to Big Mike's office and as they neared the office Big Mike himself, came out with a huge grin.

"Hi Chuck! And this lovely lady must be Sarah Walker, it is a pleasure to meeting!"

Sarah shook Big Mike's hand, noting the dusting of powdered sugar on his shirt sleeve.

"Hi Mike, yeah this is Sarah", turning to talk to her Chuck said, "I will be over by the Nerd Herd desk, so when you're finished come on over, I mean if that's all right with you."

Sarah smiled, "Sounds great, and thanks Chuck!"

With that Big Mike directed Sarah into his office as Chuck meandered over to the Nerd Herd desk.

Chuck arrived at the desk and looked, sighing in dismay at a couple of things: the first being the lack of anyone from the Herd anywhere near the desk, and second the large stack of invoices that Lester had not completed sat gathering dust.

Chuck ran his hand through his hair as he sat down and despite not be there to work began to work on the invoices.

As he worked at the mind-numbing task of getting through the stack of paperwork he began to notice something. A small feeling in the back of his mind; at first he thought it might be something to do with the new Intersect or the fact that he finally had a Load Balancer to help him with the data, but quickly dismissed that. It was like he had to keep looking in the direction of Big Mike's office. And it was a constant pull for him. As he kept thinking of this new thing – Chuck wasn't sure what to call it – he heard a man's voice desperately ask something.

Chuck looked up to see a middle-aged guy standing there with a newer model digital camcorder, and standing next to him was a young girl dressed in a pink ballerina costume.

Clearing his voice as he stood up, "Sorry, what can I help you with?"

The man pointed at his camcorder, "I bought this here a couple of weeks ago, and today at my daughter's dance recital I used it to record her dance, but now it isn't playing back and my wife is away on business and is going to kill me – can you help me figure this out? Please?"

Chuck took the offending piece of electronics and popped the slide open to see what kind of tape had been used. When the slide opened, he groaned and looking up at the man asked, "Um… where is the tape you used?"

The man's face became more confused, "Tape? Uh… I thought because it was digital I didn't need a tape…"

Morgan, having just showed up at the desk, rolled his eyes, "Oh Boy…"

Chuck seeing the fear in the man's eyes, quietly said, "Sir, you still need a tape."

"Oh no!"

Chuck looked at the man and then saw the little girl who was looking more and more like she was going to cry.

"Um… ok. We can fix this! Morgan, I am going to need the TV wall. What is the song you danced to?"

The girl looked somewhat taken aback at this, but quietly said, "Festival of the Clocks by Coppelia."

"Morgan?"

"On it Chuck!"

As Morgan left to get things set up, that odd feeling came back to Chuck, but this time it was moving. Chuck shrugged it off and looked at the dad, "Let's go film a dance recital!" Grinning he led father and daughter closer to the TV wall which was being cleared of various paraphernalia to make room for a dance recital. Morgan came back and gave Chuck the thumbs up and Chuck grabbed a pack of tapes, breaking the seal, and inserting one into the camcorder before placing it on a tripod that someone had set up.

"All right, we are ready!" Just then Chuck noticed that the girl looked even more unsure of herself.

Approaching her, Chuck kneeled down and asked her, "Are you OK? You look really nervous."

The girl just nodded her head, and looking around to make sure no one could hear her, whispered, "I am not sure I can do this. My teacher always has me stand in the back of everyone else because I'm so tall."

Chuck smiled gently at her, "It is OK, you'll do great. Besides, I will tell you a secret most ballerinas are tall."

The girl looked at him, and grinned then turned and gave her dad two thumbs up and took her place, and the music and dance began.

As Chuck made sure that the camcorder was getting the young dancer with the TV wall helping out behind her, that feeling came again to look, this time towards the Nerd Herd desk. As the young girl finished her dance with some added bravado, Chuck turned toward the desk and saw that Sarah was now standing there with a smile on her face.

Chuck turned back to the dad and taking the tape out handed it and the camcorder back to him. "Just remember next time you need to have a tape in the camcorder."

The dad grinned sheepishly, "Yep, and thank you for doing this. You really saved the day!"

"Yeah thanks Mister!" The young girl smiled up at Chuck.

"So what do I owe you for the tape?"

"Nothing, it's on the house."

"Wow, thanks again!"

Chuck bade them farewell and turned back to the desk to talk with Sarah, who was smiling brilliantly at him.

"Wow Chuck, you're a super-hero!"

Chuck laughed, "Just doing my duty, besides that girl reminds me of me."

"Really? For some reason I can't picture you in a pink leotard and a tutu!"

"Haha, very funny – no because I hit my growth spurt early on I was an easy target for the school bullies."

"Ah, I get it."

"Anyway, so what happened with Big Mike, did you unfortunately get the job?"

Sarah grinned back at Chuck, "Yep, I start in a couple of days. I told him that I need to finish unpacking my stuff from the move."

"Excellent!"

"So that means that I'm free this evening… if the offer for a date still stands that is?"

"Oh, absolutely! You deserve a fantastic last meal before you are thrown to the Green Shirts!"

Just then Chuck's phone buzzed again. Looking down Chuck saw a text from his father:

-Chuck, we need to talk. Bring Sarah.-

**Author's Note:**

I have always thought it was interesting that Sarah wasn't working at the Buy More instead of Casey. Yes, Casey will be getting a cover job too and yes the trio will be back together soon. Please leave a review, and up next we finally get a mission to go on!


	6. Chapter 6

**Another Load Balancing Thought**

As strain increases on a website or business application, eventually, a single server cannot support the full workload. To meet demand, organizations spread the workload over multiple servers. Called "load balancing," this practice prevents a single server from becoming overworked, which could cause it to slow down, drop requests, and even crash.

Load balancing lets you evenly distribute network traffic to prevent failure caused by overloading a particular resource. This strategy improves the performance and availability of applications, websites, databases, and other computing resources. It also helps process user requests quickly and accurately.

\- From the IBM Cloud Learn website.

* * *

**A Conversation with Steven**

Sarah woke up a little groggy after getting home so late, and made her way to the bathroom to get ready for the day. As she was getting ready, Sarah thought about last night's meeting, it had been a bit of a surprise.

She and Chuck had taken her Porsche to that month's location that Chuck and his father had worked out. (His dad was paranoid that some nefarious group would find out about how he contacted either Chuck or Ellie, so Stephen had arranged twelve different locations that he changed based on an algorithm he created, he would then notify his children via the LA Times want ads of which one to use.) This month's location had been the Griffith Park Observatory near the bust of James Dean. It had been almost 10 pm by the time the duo had arrived. As Sarah and Chuck slowly walked toward the statue, both were practicing their skills at spycraft: looking for oddities in the environment, making note of any people around, keeping a close eye on possible ingress and egress routes. Chuck had stopped after a minute realizing what he was doing, Sarah had also stopped but only to raise a questioning well-manicured eyebrow at Chuck, who had sheepishly apologized before quickly moving to her side.

The two had seen Stephen step out from behind the statue, look directly at them and then continue down some stairs. Chuck and Sarah followed. Stephen stopped and beckoned them towards him, before grabbing Chuck in a tight hug.

"I am so glad that the Load Balancer protocol is working Son!"

"Me too Dad, me too. Though I have noticed some odd things happening since we woke up from the Reset."

"We can talk about that in a minute," Stephen turned and held out a hand to Sarah. "I am pleased to see you again Agent…" Stephen had looked a bit lost as to what to call her.

Sarah smiled at the man she had known as Dr. Orion while she was involved in Project Omaha, "Likewise sir and it is Agent Walker nowadays."

"Thanks Agent Walker. Now that the Reset has completed have either of you noticed anything odd? Or have you had any headaches or vertigo or any other physical malady?" Stephen gestured over to a table with several chairs arranged around it.

Chuck shook his head, "I haven't noticed anything and while it is very early since the Reset, I have a feeling my headaches are a thing of the past. I don't know, Sarah – have you noticed anything?" Chuck turned his eyes toward her and Sarah felt a slight tingling in her head, but figured it was just fatigue.

She turned back to Stephen and said, "I haven't noticed anything. What should we be looking for Doctor?"

Stephen looked at her and then Chuck and then back to her, "I'm sorry to say that I honestly don't know. When we started the Omaha Project there really was only one objective to get the Intersect to work – but to do that I needed two compatible agents. Agent Walker, you were the only one of the hundreds of agents that we tested that was a compatible match."

"So all of those agents who weren't a match and washed out – what happened to them, are they OK? Were you looking to only for a match for Chuck's sake? Did you just use me to save your son?" Sarah whispered.

Stephen stood up looked at her, blew out a breath, and walked to the railing.

"To answer your questions Agent Walker, yes the Agents who weren't compatible are doing well. There were no adverse effects as they never were exposed to the Intersect. And yes, I was hoping that I would find a match for Chuck, but I knew that was a long shot. To find a perfect Balancer for the Prime that Chuck had downloaded as a child was finding a needle in a field of haystacks. I had hoped that I would be able to find a few matching Load Balancers. I thought that if I could then I would know what to look for to help Chuck. But I found you Agent Walker, and you turned out to be the perfect Balancer for Chuck. If I had wanted to only use you then ask yourself why I didn't put you in contact with Chuck immediately. Why wait until now?"

Sarah heard Chuck exhale and realized that she too had been holding her breath. She looked down at her hands that were resting folded on the table. "You're right, Doctor. I'm sorry to accuse you of that, this is a lot to take."

"It is all right Agent Walker, but there are some other things that you need to know. I ask that you keep an open mind about what you're going to be told. Please."

Sarah looked up right into Stephen's eyes and saw the plea and the hope that she would accept whatever else was about to be sprung on her.

"I can only promise that I will try Doctor."

Stephen gave her a small grin, and then pulled up the left sleeve of his shirt, and typed something on what looked like a flexible keyboard.

"OK they will be right here."

"Dad… who will?"

"Chuck, there are two more people that you both need to meet. I will let them explain everything when they get here."

Sarah stood and went to the railing and began to once again check for exits that she could use in case of an emergency. Chuck stood and walked toward her as he came close to her he turned to lean against the railing, also checking the various possible exits without realizing he was even doing it.

"Are you OK Sarah?"

Sarah looked at him, his expressive eyes looked embarrassed and sad and worried all at the same time. "Actually Chuck, I am. Surprisingly so, I might add."

The look in Chuck's eyes changed in an instant to something like joy and excitement.

"Of course, I am a little worried about who these others are that your father wants us to meet tonight. I mean this is a fairly secluded spot," she whispered.

Chuck nodded his head, "If my dad trusts them then I know we can as well. But if something goes wrong, we can either use the south stairwell to get down to a hiking path that is directly below the observatory, or that door there goes through to the second floor of the observatory itself and I happen to know the key code…" He grinned as he tapped his temple.

Sarah looked at him and then at the door and all of a sudden she knew the code and where the door would lead too.

"Chuck? Um… I know too… and I didn't flash – did you?"

Chuck smiled even wider, "I didn't… that was amazing."

Sarah grinned at him, "This is going to take some getting used to you know."

Chuck stood up to his full six foot three inches and looked at her. His gaze pierced her heart and she felt the odd tingle in her brain. "I know we are both going to have to figure this out."

Just then steps sounded coming down the stairs that they had used. She tensed as she heard the steps knowing one could only be made by a large man while the other was softer. The two strangers walked onto the terrace and as they entered the light, Sarah instantly recognized both of them: General Dianne Beckman and Agent John Casey of the NSA.

Stephen stood and gestured to the seats at the table, "Please Sarah, Chuck – come and sit with us. We have much to discuss and I don't want to keep you two up all night."

What happened next was at first unbelievable to Sarah. General Beckman had shown and explained that there was a group calling themselves the Ring that had started to infiltrate all levels of the nations of NATO. They apparently had various branches the two largest were Fulcrum, which handled a majority of the muscle of the organization while Volkoff Industries (or VI) was in charge of science. What had made Sarah's head spin was that the General had given proof that Sarah's boss and mentor had been a member of the Ring since before he had recruited her into the CIA. Beckman had simply slid a picture of a wasp across the table and both Sarah and Chuck had experienced the information. It had all been there, Director Graham was a traitor and a manipulative bastard.

"Agent Walker, you were sent here to recover the Intersect from someone that Agent Larkin had supposedly sent to. Graham doesn't realize that the evidence against him is in the Intersect, but he is trying to capture the Intersect to present to the Ring so that they can have VI develop it for use by Fulcrum agents. We need to work together to make sure he never realizes that we know about everything. This is what I would like to propose…"

The general had then in a very succinct way laid out her plan to capture not only Graham, but to put an end to the Ring. It would involve Chuck becoming an FBI agent, care of some brilliant hacking from Stephen, thus allowing for Chuck to act as the FBI liaison. Major Casey would act as the NSA liaison and would get a cover near to the Buy More. Agent Larkin had known about the possibility that Graham was rotten, but neither Stephen nor Beckman would say more.

"Agent Larkin has his own part to play in this, but just know he is fine and doing his job well." Beckman had said.

Casey would be in touch with Chuck and Sarah the following day to fill them in on his cover and begin the next phase – the false search for the stolen intersect, that as far as Graham knew was somewhere in the LA area.

Shortly after that, the five people had split up to go their separate ways.

As they drove back to Burbank, Chuck looked at Sarah, "Are you OK?"

She had thought for a few minutes about that question. Everything was going so fast for her. She had become a Balancer, she had found out that her boss wasn't as honorable as she had imagined. But the thought that kept niggling in her brain was that she had met Chuck. And at that thought, she turned to look at his concerned face.

"Yeah, it is a lot to take in, but surprisingly I good Chuck."

As she said that to him the tingle in her brain returned for a moment. She was going to have figure out what it meant.

* * *

**First Days**

Chuck arrived at the Buy More decked out in the usual apparel – white shirt, dark grey tie, black slacks, and of course his favorite pair of black Chuck Taylors. He was early for his shift, but figured (correctly so) that the Wonder Twins had left a stack of unfinished reports for him to go through, besides he wanted to be there when Sarah arrived to begin her mind-numbing, poor-paying, soul-sucking cover job. He hoped it wouldn't drive her insane, but then again he had managed to maintain his somewhat questionable sanity himself, so maybe there was hope.

Chuck sighed heavily as he looked at the stack of invoices and offsite reports that was piled up on the Nerd Herd desk. Sitting down knowing that there was no way to get around them, he began to work his way through. He became so focused on the inane paperwork that he didn't notice the slight tingle in his brain until it became more insistent. When he looked up he had a feeling that he was about to see Sarah walk through the doors of the Buy More. In fact he was so sure of it, that he began counting down the time. Five… four… three… two… one…

And in that instant, a beautiful blonde walked through the front sliding doors and made eye contact with Chuck, and his world was suddenly brighter. The tingle in his brain began again, but this time it was like a soft hum and Chuck barely noticed it, as Sarah made her way towards the Nerd Herd desk and Chuck smiling at him as she did so.

"Good morning Chuck, how are you?"

Chuck's grin widened, "Morning Sarah, I am actually doing great. Did you get settled in last night OK?"

Sarah nodded, "Yeah, after dropping you off at your apartment I just went back and crashed. I can't remember the last time I was so tired. But this morning, I feel great!"

"OK, well Big Mike isn't here yet, he doesn't usually roll in until tenish. So why don't I show you around, and you can ask me any questions about what your predecessor did. Not that I think it worked well, I mean he had several folks quit out right because of some of the draconian things he baked up."

"Seriously? He must have had some major personality problems I bet," Sarah quipped as she followed Chuck towards the back of the store.

"Oh you have no idea of the pain that followed Harry Tang around like a cloud."

Sarah laughed at the imagery, and continued to tail Chuck as he showed the various Employee Only areas giving her a quick rundown of the green shirts, who to trust and who to be wary of. Sarah listened while cataloging the information away. As they continued through the bowels of the store, Sarah also noted the various exits and doors that if necessary could be used in tactical situations. Chuck led her back to the sales floor and explained that one of the few ideas that Harry had was a daily briefing with the staff before the store opened. Sarah thought about it and decided it was a good way to introduce herself and make sure that the new Assistant Manager was a very different person that Harry Tang.

Making their way back toward the Nerd Herd desk, Chuck gave up his seat to Sarah so she could fill out the various HR forms necessary to start her new "job". The morning began in earnest as employees showed up and took note of the well-dressed blonde woman sitting at the Nerd Herd desk chatting with the Head Nerd. They were even more surprised when at the daily meeting she accompanied Chuck, who then introduced her to them all as the new Assistant Manager, Sarah Walker.

What happened next would be forever remembered as the day Buy More stood still. Because Sarah charmed every single employee lucky enough to have been there, when she was done giving her vision of the near future of the Burbank Buy More, the entire staff would have given their left legs had Sarah asked it of them. There was however one exception, Lester Patil. He had tried to assert his perverted dominance early on in the meeting, but Sarah had deftly shut him down quickly and without causing the fuss that Lester had secondarily hoped for.

As the staff was dismissed and began to prepare the store for that day of business, Sarah had quietly pulled Lester to the side and ever-so politely read him the riot act, when Lester had balked and claimed he worked for Chuck, Sarah had agreed and motioned Chuck over from the Nerd Herd desk. When Chuck had arrived and was apprised of the situation, he looked at Lester and said, "I'm sorry Lester, but Miss Walker is correct, and if you want to keep your job here I would do as she has asked." Chuck then turned and left (though not before giving Sarah a quick grin and a thumbs up). Chuck knew that once Lester had been corralled, Jeff would be easy to manage, and with the two most troublesome falling into line the rest of the herd would fall into line, though if that morning's daily meeting was any indication Lester and Jeff would be quickly out-manned if they planned anything negative towards Sarah.

Time passed, Big Mike arrived and was so surprised by the change in attitude of his employees he pulled both Chuck and Sarah into his office to praise them.

"I don't know what you did Sarah, but please keep it up! I haven't seen the employees doing this well in months! And if the sales report continues to go the way just this morning's report is, then we are going to have a very good day."

"Thanks Big Mike, Chuck showed me around earlier and I finished my HR paperwork for corporate. I do have one question – how tied are you to the current layout of the store?"

Mike shrugged, "I'm not, why do you ask?"

"Well, I have some ideas about rearranging things that may help increase sales even more. Can I put them down and run them by you tomorrow?"

Mike nodded, "Of course Sarah that sounds like an interesting idea. Let's chat tomorrow."

As Sarah and Chuck left Big Mike's office, they saw Agent Casey walk into the store. He caught their eye and walked toward them.

"Hi sir, how may we help you today?" Chuck asked.

"Hi, yes, my name is John Casey and I am looking to set up some security at my new store that I just opened up across the parking lot. Could one of you help me with that?"

"Sure, I can. Sarah, why don't you join us and I can show you some of the security equipment that Buy More offers. Sorry Mr. Casey, today is Sarah's first day here – would you mind if she tagged along?"

"Not at all, lead the way."

The trio talked a bit about the offerings the Buy More had – though all three knew that the NSA would be installing the security at Casey's new business. He was very tight-lipped about what the business was going to be, but Chuck couldn't miss the glimmer in Casey's eyes as he thought about the business.

As the day continued on, Sarah continued to settle into her new cover job. She realized that this was one of the first cover jobs she had that didn't force her to use her looks. As she walked over to the Customer Service desk at the front of the store, she looked across the parking lot and saw the boarded up store front that was to be Casey's cover and next door was a Wienerlicious, she shuddered grateful that she hadn't been forced to use that restaurant as a cover.

Right before the end of her shift, she meandered over to the Nerd Herd desk, where Chuck was still ensconced with paperwork. As she neared the desk, the tingling in her brain began again. She had noticed that it seemed to grow more insistent the closer she got to Chuck, she had also begun to notice that throughout the day she had sensed where Chuck was in the store as he moved about. Again, she determined to figure it out but chalked it up to something to do with the Intersect.

"Chuck?"

Chuck's curly head looked up and he smiled at her, causing the tingling to get stronger as well as a fluttering in her belly that she had never experienced before.

"Hi Sarah, how was your first day, you're off the clock in a little bit aren't you?"

"Yeah, yeah I am. It has been good actually, there are some things that I am thinking about changing but before I left I had a question for you: are we still on for tonight's dinner?"

Chuck's grin again widened, something that seemed to happen while he was near to her, and it made her brain and belly flutter even more wildly.

"Yeah, we are! I want to introduce you to the best Mexican restaurant I know of. I am just about finished with this stack of paperwork that someone left for me. Thanks Lester!"

A snide voice arose from the back of the store, "You're welcome Chuckster!"

Chuck shook his head, and asked, "So when should I pick you up?"

Sarah smiled at him, "Um, no offense Chuck, but I don't want to drive around in the Nerd Herder, would it be all right if I picked you up at seven?"

Chuck laughed, "Ha! So the truth comes out! You wound me Sarah, you wound me to the core! Disparaging the noble Herder! Oh the shame! Oh the horror!" By this time Chuck had thrown one arm over his eyes and one hand was clutching his chest as he acted as the damsel in distress, the next second though he had stood and putting his hands on the desk leaned over and in a stage whisper said, "OK, you have a fair point. You win, your Porsche is much better, so seven sounds perfect!"

Staring into his brown eyes and looking at the grin plastered on his face, Sarah once more felt something odd tingle in her brain and belly, "Good, see you then. Maybe after dinner we can get you some acting lessons, cause it appears that you need them… badly!" She grinned at him as she sauntered away, Chuck unable to stop staring at her as she did.

* * *

**Keeping Graham in the Dark**

When Sarah finally finished her shift, she waved goodbye to some of the folks after having bid farewell to Chuck and Big Mike (who surprised her with the praise he had heaped upon her, Sarah felt like he wanted to make sure she was going to come back the following day). As she got in her car, she pulled the encrypted sat phone, quickly sent a text, and then dialed her boss.

"Agent Walker, I hope that you have news."

"I do, sir. The lead to Agent Larkin ended in a dead end. The former roommate he sent the file to is named Charles Bartowski and he is currently a special agent with the FBI. When I reached out to him he told me he hadn't heard from Larkin since their college days."

"Did you verify?"

"Of course, sir." Sarah had to be careful to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

"What did you find?"

"I checked Bartowski's various computers, both at home and at the office. There was no evidence of the Intersect file on either of them."

"OK. Do you have any other leads?"

"Yes, sir. I believe that whoever Larkin sent is somewhere in the greater LA area. I am working on some leads."

"Anything concrete though?"

"No."

"Damn. I am going to pull you off of the mis…"

"Sir?" Sarah was calm on the surface, but given Graham's statement she was panicking on the inside. If she left now… an image of Chuck came unbidden to her mind and with it the now familiar tingles – if she was sent on another mission Sarah knew that Chuck would be in trouble again.

"Sorry Agent Walker, I need to take this call. Someone from the NSA has news. I will call you back."

With that the line went dead, and Sarah knew that General Beckman had called Director Graham to begin her part of the ruse. Sarah just hoped that it would work the way that they had planned the previous night.

* * *

**Mariachi Bands, Margaritas, and a Bomb… Oh My!**

Later Sarah arrived at Chuck's apartment that he shared with his sister Ellie and her boyfriend Devon. For some unknown reason Sarah was nervous. It was an unusual feeling because she had already met both Ellie and Devon, but it still was odd to feel the feeling that her nerves were wrangling her subconscious up to a level that she would not, should not be feeling for this kind of scenario. As Sarah entered the small courtyard in the middle of the complex she stopped so she could gather her thoughts and calm herself down a notch.

As she stood by the fountain, she took several deep breaths and focused. It was then that she felt the tingle in her brain again. It felt like it was moving back and forth, and as Sarah continued to focus on it she felt a clammy nervousness that wasn't coming from her. She looked up and saw a window on the first floor, the blinds were drawn and with the lights on she could see someone pacing. Sarah's breath caught as she watched as the shadow paced back and forth… in time with the tingling in her brain. Her eyes widen and she shook her head at the impossibility of the situation. Deciding it was just her mind playing tricks on her, she went to the door and just as she was about to knock, the door swung open and she was immediately pulled into a giant hug.

"Oh Sarah! I am so glad to see you again! I almost didn't believe Chuck when he said that he was going on a date, and when he told me it was you I was really not believing him! And now you're here and that means he wasn't making it up to get me off his back. I am soo glad to see you again! Wait… I already said that, I'm sorry. Please come in, come in."

Ellie pulled Sarah's hands into the apartment, and just as she did, Sarah could feel the tingle smooth out as Chuck came quickly down the hall.

"Ellie, hey I think we are going to go. I wouldn't want you to start interrogating my date before we even have an actual date." Then he turned his eyes to look at Sarah, "Sorry Sarah, Ellie can be a little exuberant at times, shall we go before her head explodes with excitement?"

Ellie looked a little disappointed, but quickly put a smile on her face and shooed Chuck and Sarah towards the door. "You're right Chuck, go. You two have fun, I need to get ready for my night shift. Love you little brother! Bye Sarah, I hope that I will get to see you again!"

Finally making it back to the car, Sarah smiled at Chuck.

"Hey Chuck, since I don't know where we're going, do you want to drive?"

Chuck's face went blank and his mouth dropped open, "Are you, um… are you serious?"

"Ha, nope! I'll drive, and you navigate!"

Chuck grinned at her, "Good one Sarah. Will there ever come a time that I will be able to drive this work of art?"

"Hmmm, maybe… but you will have to grovel and be in my good graces for a long while before that happens."

Chuck grinned at her, "Deal then!"

As Sarah drove to the restaurant, she listened to Chuck's directions and his statements about various places in Burbank. The fluttering in her stomach had returned when he had looked at her back at his apartment and the feeling was so pleasant to Sarah that she had been surprised and began to hope that it wouldn't leave. She listened to him ramble on about the city that he had called home for most of his life.

When they got to the restaurant, the conversation continued as though they had known each other for their entire lives, and in a way they had. It was a feeling of comfort that Sarah had never felt before, and it was one that she never wanted to be without if she could help it.

During a lull in the conversation as they were eating, Sarah blurted out, "I like you Chuck."

The smile on Chuck's face looked like it would split his face in two it was so wide and open and kind. Sarah once again felt that tingle in her head.

As Chuck looked at her he glanced up at the television that was airing a local news report. Just as it switched stories, he stopped and looked at her.

"Sarah, we need to go. We need to go now."

Sarah was concerned at the urgency she heard in his voice, "What is it Chuck?"

As she finished the question, the tingle in her brain settled down and she saw the face of a US General, a doctor who was selling military secrets to North Korea, a Serbian demolitions expert who had turned mercenary, the blue print of a bomb, and a hotel conference room in LA. And with all of the information she knew why Chuck was so urgent, the general was going to die if they didn't get to the LA hotel quickly.

She looked at Chuck, he smiled at her, "It worked didn't it?"

"Yeah, and we need to go. You pay the check and I'll grab the car."

They both knew they had to hurry, they had a General to save from a traitorous doctor and a Serbian bomber.

* * *

**Author's Note**

Sorry that I ended this chapter on a cliff like that, I promise that Chapter 7 will not be too far behind this one. I just realized that this chapter was getting long, so I thought it was a good place to break.

I am curious if any of my amazing readers will figure out what Casey will be doing as a cover job?

I hope you are enjoying this story, and I am sorry it is taking so long between chapters. I hope that you find the wait worth it.


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